December 16, 2007
3 Advent, Year A
The Reverend William J. Eakins
Christ Church Cathedral

“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to [Jesus], “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?”

Well, no wonder John was puzzled. He had been so confident about what God was about to do. “Repent and prepare the way of the Lord” had been John’s urgent proclamation. The Messiah is about to come with judgment and with retribution, to separate the good people from the bad people like a farmer separates the wheat from the chaff. The wheat will be gathered into the storehouse but the worthless chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. So repent! Clean up your life so that such terrible judgment will not befall you. Furthermore John had been sure that Jesus was the very Messiah God had sent to carry out such divine judgment. Surely John had heard a voice from on high saying concerning Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

But not so very much later, John was not so certain that he had heard aright. In the prison cell where John had landed after his fearless preaching about repentance had got him into big trouble with Herod, John waited and listened anxiously for news about what Jesus was doing. And what John heard was not at all what he had expected. Where was the promised Day of Judgment? Where were the thunderbolts of God’s anger hurled against evil doers? Where was the unquenchable fire of God’s punishment? Why Jesus wasn’t denouncing the tax collectors, harlots and other sinners; he was sitting down to eat with them!. And so John sent some of his disciples to ask about what was going on here. Perhaps I was misguided about you, Jesus. Maybe I was misguided when I called you the Messiah. Maybe that voice I heard didn’t come from heaven but was merely the whistling of the wind. So tell me, Jesus, tell me plainly, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?”

Jesus’ answer to John is simple. He tells John’s disciples to go back to John’s prison and tell their master what they have heard and seen and let him make up his mind on that basis. And what John’s disciples saw and heard was amazing: the blind were seeing, people who had not walked in years were playing ring-around-the-rosy, untouchable lepers were hugging and kissing their children, deaf folks were swapping stories, some caskets were lying open and their contents up and walking around, and the poor were hearing a sermon that made them smile. What John’s disciples saw and heard was straight out of the passage from Isaiah we heard this morning, the promise of what happens when God’s power is stirred up and comes among us with great might.

In effect, Jesus was saying to John: Think again, my friend. Maybe you have failed to grasp fully what God is doing here. John, you have focused your life on a message of repentance, and repentance is necessary because it opens people’s hearts to recognize their need for a Savior. And that is just what God has sent me to be - the Savior of the world. And so I, Jesus, as God’s Anointed One, have come to fulfill God’s healing promises of old. I have come to give sight to the blind, to open deaf ears, to bring the dead to life, and to preach the Good News of God’s love to all who are poor in spirit. So, John, the word of God is not as you have supposed, “Repent lest you be judged” but rather, “Repent and receive with joy God’s redeeming work.”

We are not told how John responded to Jesus. Perhaps John’s troubled mind was enlightened and when he died, executed by Herod a short time later, that John died saying, like Simeon, “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior.” Perhaps however, John remained perplexed right until the end, still disappointed that the fiery judgment had never arrived.

Certainly there are still many people even today, who fail to recognize the Kingdom of Heaven, the new divine economy that Jesus Christ ushered in. These are the people whose religion is all tied up with do’s and don’ts, with exacting codes of moral behavior. The goal is to be good and not bad - certainly an admirable goal. However, if that is all your religion amounts to, it is bound to get you into lots of trouble. You’ll either end up feeling miserable and guilty, painfully aware of how far from perfection you are, or you’ll end up a self-satisfied, judgmental prig, blind to your own faults while at the same time feeling oh-so-superior to all those others who are messing up their lives.

The religion that Jesus came to bring us, the religion he called the Good News, opens up quite another dimension from the religion of do’s and don’ts, being good not bad. It is the religion that John was baffled by, the religion that lay beyond his expectation. It is the religion of grace, where sinners are welcomed and forgiven, not condemned; where the overflowing love of God heals all who are sick in body and soul, and raises the dead to life.

The Good News of God’s grace has profound implications for what we Christians are supposed to be doing. Our mission is not to be going around tut-tutting, shaking a warning finger, and telling people to shape up and fly right. Our message is not the bad news of God’s judgment on humanity’s manifold sins and failures. Rather, our message is the Good News of how much God loves this broken world and every person in it, that God loves us so much that God took frail flesh and came among us. Likewise our mission is to embody love, to make it known not just by what we say but by the way we live. Like the Word made flesh, we are to be compassionate, understanding, peaceable, just, patient, genuine, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. It is such love which adds the ring of truth to what we Christians say. It is such Christ-like love which has the power to change lives, to change the world.

Christmas is coming and those of us who bear the name of Christ can be heralds of good tidings in a way that John the Baptist never was. You see, we know the good news of God’s redeeming love, and we are commissioned to proclaim that good news to a watching and waiting world. Many have never heard the Good News of Christmas - at least never heard the story told with convincing power. How else can you account for the fact that the number one song on the Christmas hit parade is Winter Wonderland and number two is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? What the world sees and hears depends on us. If we celebrate Christmas with no more than a frantic round of cocktail parties and shopping, we are no heralds of good news. But maybe people might stop and listen if they could see us Christians loving one another, praying for the sick, caring for the elderly and feeding the poor, working for justice and peace for all. Maybe then we would be able to proclaim the Good News of God’s love with such an integrity that all the world might believe.

People all around us are certainly waiting and watching. People are looking for answers in a disturbing and confusing world. And, like Jesus, we the Church are being asked, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for someone else?” Are you authentic? Are you telling the truth? And the only answer we can possible give is the one that Christ gave: “hear and see.”